WASHINGTON− The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that U.S employment rate was 5.7 percent in January, 0.1 percent higher than at the end of 2014. Another survey shows businesses created a net of 257,000 jobs last month.

BLS also reports that in January 2014, there were 10.28 million unemployed workers and unemployment rate was 6.6 percent.

Elise Gould of the pro-worker Economic Policy Institute said January’s job creation was a strong start for the year, but the economy still needs to create jobs for new jobseekers since the Great Recession. “At 257,000 jobs a month, we would get to pre-recession labor market health by May 2017,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s clearly still tremendous slack in the labor market. Despite job growth, workers are in desperate need of a raise…Wages need to grow faster, and for long time, before we can say the economy is truly working for working people−and before the Federal Reserve should think about tapping the brakes.”

One of every nine workers are jobless people who work part-time when they really want full-time work and those who are discouraged they’ve stopped seeking work. The number of long-term unemployed, who have been jobless for six months, has remained unchanged at 2.8 million.